The field of identity management has grown in response to the proliferation of digital devices, platforms, and applications in the 21st century. For many years using third-party tracking cookies, also known as web cookies, was the method of choice for developers wanting to track and authenticate users. Web cookies are small pieces of data that are stored on a user's web browser when a user accesses content such as a website. Every time a user loads the website, the browser sends a cookie back to a server where the cookie is used to identify a user and notify the website of the user's previous activities. Websites can then use the information they gather to provide insight into consumers' patterns of behavior, interests, etc., which advertisers may use to reach consumers as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.
As targeted advertising in the digital space continues to advance, many companies are moving away from the collection of third-party cookies to reach consumers. Many mobile applications do not support cookies. Moreover, companies are increasingly using their own proprietary user identifiers (user IDs) to identify unique users across devices and platforms as diverse as desktop computers running Linux to mobile phones or wearable computers running Android. For example, a company such as Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., or Google Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., can monitor a user's behavior using an identifierForAdvertisers (IDFA) or an Android ID, respectively. These IDs allow companies to gain insight into user behavior regardless of whether a user is at their desktop computer, their smart TV, or using any number of mobile devices.
Companies that track user activity work with multiple parties to monetize the information they collect about users. Advertisement exchanges, supply-side platforms (SSPs), and demand-side platforms (DSPs), for example, receive identification information from companies. However, in some cases an identifier such as an IDFA or an Android ID is not passed along to a receiving party. In some cases a hashed version of an ID is provided. Still in other cases an arbitrary user ID is provided. Often times, this leaves companies that receive customer information with disparate and fragmented information. The company can have some information about a customer that comes from Apple, some information about a customer that comes from Google, and some information from companies such as Facebook Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif., Twitter Inc. of San Francisco, Calif., etc., while not knowing that a portion of the received information all corresponds to a single unique user. Thus, companies that receive multiple alias IDs are faced with the difficult task of identifying unique users based on disparate and fragmented information derived from a variety of platforms and devices.